The Facebook social network has released part of its source code under the "Facebook Open Platform" label, including the F8 developer platform which was released one year ago.

The source code comprises a "snapshot of the infrastructure on which Facebook is based" and includes the API infrastructure and the FQL (Facebook Query Language) Parser, FBML (Facebook Markup Language), and (Facebook JavaScript).

Facebook has placed the component under the MPL (Mozilla Public License) and CPAL (Common Public Attribution License) Open Source licenses, which OSI (Open Source Initiative) regards to be genuine Open Source licenses. According to a statement this is a step by the operators to give something back to the community, which has requested more tools and information. At the same time, the people behind Facebook hope that creative users will use the platform in ways that they had never thought of.

This code release is just the first step as Facebook will be releasing more source code in future. . Facebook Open Platform can be downloaded from this website as a zipped tarball.

The Open-Xchange and Zarafa groupware systems can tap into the APIs of Facebook, Twitter, and Xing, but you need different tactics for each service – keep in mind that the information yield is sometimes quite meager.